Christmas Wonder

One of the greatest joys of being a father has been the chance to tip-toe into the glow of my children's faces as they turn on the Christmas lights each morning over these Advent days. Pink fingers comb back static hair and chipping toenail polish peeks out from beneath fairy nightgowns. They giggle with a combination of delight and accomplishment. “This is the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown,” I think to myself. Unlike us, they seem to live with that glow not just on Christmas morning but everyday whether swinging on the swings or uncapping their favorite Sharpie or even flushing the toilet. Their secret, which we adults seem to miss, is that they look with this same Christmas wonder at a pile of fallen leaves or a shiny pair of orange-handled scissors.

We are the ones who have skillfully divided life into pleasures and chores. For adults, wonder is stingily rationed to a few greeting card moments each year when we slow our minds long enough to really appreciate the unnoticed gifts that flood our lives each day. Perhaps, children know better the sacredness of each moment, perhaps because they haven’t yet learned that there is an alternative.

They know that December 26 is as exciting and filled with possibility as the day before. It’s the day our children will toss aside Christmas presents only to play with the cardboard boxes that contained them a day before. It’s the day when they will dance the limbo with all the used ribbons tied together. It’s the day when they will plead to devour stale Christmas cookies for breakfast. It’s the day when we will all jump in bed together and have a WWF wrestling match until daddy hurts himself. It’s the day when they will go into the craft closet and find another blank page on which they will draw their lives--one rainbow and one flower at a time. It’s the day when their sleepy footsteps will stumble downstairs and stand before a tree to rival its lights with their glowing eyes.

We wish you bright eyes, wide hearts, and the wonder of ordinary things this year. May you enjoy the December 26ths of your life with the same richness and sacredness that fill your Christmas morning.

Advent Blessings,

Brandon, Susan, Sophia, and Ellie Nappi

First Empty Your Cup

Will your mind ever slow down? Anxious about tomorrow, obsessed about yesterday, the mind resists living in the only moment it is ever been afforded: the NOW. We have trained our minds to engage in endless cycles of judgment, commentary, and analysis. Could there be a way to gently quiet the mental cacophony that has become the omnipresent background noise of our lives?

“Keep watch with me.” The words of Jesus from Gesthemani echoed in my head as I set my sleepy body upon the cushion in the dimly lit meditation hall. Fr. Robert Kennedy, a Jesuit priest and Zen teacher entered the room, planted a glowing stick of incense into a bowl of sand, and assumed his place at the front of the room. A copper bell rang three times to begin a 3 day meditation retreat. Its steady vibrations drew me and my breath into the most reliable place where we can meet God--in the silence. Over the next three days, he would teach us, by what he said and by what le left unsaid, about how Zen practice can be used by the faithful Christian to grow closer to Christ.

Fr. Kennedy has become the unofficial translator of Zen practice to a growing number of Christians who have integrated Zen meditation into the Christian life as a way to empty the mind and put on the mind of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 2.16). When asked why he turned to Zen while serving as a missionary in Japan, he responded: “I wanted a faith that was deeper, that was rooted in my experience, that was not a theory that could be blown away with a change in culture. . . . Christianity is not a triumphal march to the Kingdom. It is an emptying of self. This profound teaching of Christian life is very close to Buddhism. Buddhism tries to empty ourselves of a false identity and to come to the world as naked and as crucified as Christ was.”[1][1]

Nearly 30 years later, Fr. Kennedy has received the title roshi, or “old teacher” in the Zen tradition. As a committed Christian, priest, and Zen teacher, Fr. Kennedy has helped thousands to grow closer to Christ by helping them to empty their minds so they might be filled with the mind of Christ.

Fr. Kennedy tells a famous Zen story tells of a man who went to visit a Zen master. First, the old master served tea. He filled his guest's cup to the brim and then kept on pouring. The tea spilled over the sides of the cup, until the astonished man could no longer hold his polite silence. “Stop!” he cried. “No more will go in!” The master quietly replied, “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

The Christian, inspired by this Zen insight, might likewise ask: how can we put on the mind of Christ, unless our mental space is emptied of its desires, judgments, and incessant mental chatter? A community of Christians will gather to ponder this question on November 12-14 at Holy Family where Fr. Kennedy will lead a weekend retreat entitled, Zen Spirit-Christian Spirit which explores the role of Zen practice in the Christian life. For more information, visit http://www.holyfamilyretreat.org/.

Brandon Nappi D.Min, PhD

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[1][1]Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., “Interview with Fr. Robert Kennedy, S.J,” interview by Tom Fox, National Catholic Reporter website, available at ncrcafe.org/node/1057 (accessed 11 September 2008).

James Carroll at Holy Family

Holy Family welcomes author James Carroll on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 for a day and evening retreat.

Click here to read what the L. A. Times says about Practicing Catholic by James Carroll.

The OUT Experience

Perhaps the best therapy for any illness, whether mental or any kind of phyiscal suffering, is what I call the OUT experience, the "Oh U Too" story exhcnage with another person or with the God of your understanding and inspriation. Story-exchange and prayer remind me that I'm not alone in the recovery and discovery journey of life. Here's a true story that actually happened to me.

"How'd I ever get here, in a mental hospital?" I asked myself as I sat in a white plastic chair just outside the front door of the hospital overlooking a little pond and some meandering ducks. As I sat there in my hospital attire I mocked myself repeatedly, "You're nuts, crazy, loony, bonkers, worthless, and you'll never work again."

While my self-condemnation continued, another patient came through the hospital doors, limped toward the empty chair next to me and sat down.

"Miss Arrrgnus is what they call me," the beautifully black woman said, as she leaned on the white plastic chair.

I presumed her name was actually Agnes but enjoyed the rolling sound of the extra "r's." Miss Arrrgnus slowly began to tell me her story.

"So what you in for Honey?" she finally asked.

"Depression," I answered

"I come here every now and then to get away from my family," she said.

I shocked myself with a little laugh, the first time I'd laughed in weeks.

"First time in a streeeeeeesssss unit?" Miss Arrrgnus then asked.

" Yes," I answered.

"What kind of work you do, Honey," she asked.

"I'm a Catholic priest," I said hesitantly.

"Never met one of you before," Miss Arrrgnus said. "I'll ask the people in my fellowship church to pray for you."

After a long uncomfortable pause Miss Arrrgnus spoke up again. "Come on, Honey, stop your brain strain. Help me out of this chair and let's go to the meeting the druggies are having in the conference room. The company will be good for you. Some of the nicest people you'll ever meet are recovering addicts. No nonsense there, Honey."

As we walked through the door, Miss Arrrgnus leaned heavily on my arm as though I were a crutch. I recalled at that moment an old saying: "I'd rather limp through life on the right road than run down the wrong."

To walk, Miss Arrrgnus and I had to lean forward and risk losing our balance and falling with each step. We had to let go of our previous stability, trusting that with each step there would be a new foundation, a new stability. It was good to walk with such an honorable and honest woman. This, thankfully, would not be the last time Miss Arrrgnus gracefully interrupted my isolation. Every day during our hospital stay Miss Arrrgnus and I sat with each other for lunch and would offer a prayer, not only for the food we were about to eat, but in thanksgiving for what God was giving us - the promise of Hope that if we continued the great practice of story-exchange with friends, family, companions in recovery, therapists, psychiatrists and God, we would discover a new way of living.

Fr. John Baptist Pesce - We Are the Church!

Few who have undertaken seriously to live out their baptismal commitment have found it to be a lark. That enterprise is a formidable challenge. There are weaknesses from within. There are obstacles from without. Different periods in the history of the church have made the latter loom large. Say the sixteenth century must have been a truly daunting time.

Many Catholics dedicated to gospel lives find our times as presenting uncommon pressures. What is embraced by the term the child sex abuse scandal and the remarkable irresponsibility on the part of certain church authorities in handling these matters have, as some expressed it, “tested” their faith. Not, necessarily, that they consider leaving the church (although, we are told, some have done that), but they are, as at least one has stated, “just hanging in there by their finger nails.” (Not the most promising stance, indeed.)

It seems to me that, granted all the difficulties involved and not denying them in pollyanna fashion, these are times that summon us to rise above the mediocrity, cynicism, nihilism and polarization that engulf us, to allow ourselves to be stretched out to the dimensions of Christ to show forth the beautiful and mature Christ for whom, consciously or unconsciously, people are hungering and thirsting for.

There is encouragement and inspiration to be taken from the words of Pius XI in December l937, a time when matters in state and church, though, admittedly, for far different reasons than today, could have been judged not conducive to living out one’s baptismal commitment. “This era is one of the most disturbed that mankind has ever known. It is also one of the finest, for it is an age where mediocrity is allowed to nobody, where Christian lives flower in all their beauty and triumphs are made ready for the Church, but we need holiness for that.” (Emphasis mine, but knowing how Pius XI had a capacity for irascibility, I believe he would have stressed those words).

I believe this is the faith perspective called for today. The God who call us to this task is the God who is for us and with us. The God who dwells within us. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “In” is the superlative degree of “with,” Yes, we are weak but, as the Church prays, “God chooses the weak to make them strong” in bearing witness. We can accommodate for our purposes the words of Gandhi to those who were not considered a people in his day exhorting them to their dignity as human beings in order to energize them to deliver themselves from under the heel of the British Empire, “We are to be the change we seek in society.”

We are to be the change we seek in the Church. Yes, structures have to be changed. Definitely reforms are called for to bring about an open church which is transparent and respectful of all. A church which fulfills its function as expressed by the Second Vatican Council to “render God the Father and his incarnate Son present and as it were visible in the world.” A church which reflects the concern of the Lord for the downtrodden and marginalized, that is stripped of pomposity and that is in the forefront of advocacy for nonviolence. A Church that is not sexist where there are no second class citizens. But we are that Church! The Church is not the Pope, the Vatican, the curia, the bishops, the clergy. (Google Nicholas D. Kristof, “Who Can Mock This Church?” New York Times, May 2, 2010) We are the Church! That is one reason I have been saying for a long time now, “Be highly critical of the Church.. . . . It may lead to your own conversion.”

“But we need holiness for that.” There is no such thing as cheap discipleship or cheap grace. Are we willing to pay that price? And it is a costly one!

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. … This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. … At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak his name written in us … like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. . . . I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Thomas Merton

Peace at the Center

Last weekend, Holy Family hosted its first annual Centering Prayer Retreat. In the coming years, we hope more of our friends will join us in this transformational prayer practice.

Centering prayer is like coming home. It helps me remember who I am. In a world that has so many claims on us and pressures us to be other than who we “truly” are, it is the place of reminder that we are a loved being of God. We realize and remember that we are literally breathed by Another and connected to all others in a web of care. All of our strivings for security and safety, affection and esteem, power and control are meaningless outside of God’s love. It is the ultimate rest stop on our journey, where we bring “nothing” and receive everything.

When I first started Centering Prayer I was at once greeted by my “monkey mind” jumping all over the place from one thought to another--each shouting for attention. My head was a roomful of noise and it was almost painful to try and sit quietly. Twenty minutes seemed like an eternity. Yet with faithfulness and the help of the sacred word bringing me back and back and back—it became a door—an icon of entry into the one true thing in my life—the presence of God.

Coming to this Presence daily I learned there is never a condition on God’s love. Every day, whether I am happy, sad, angry, afraid. I am never “not good enough”---the door is never closed. And gradually the seeds planted during this time reached out into all of my life. All I need to do is pause and remember the Presence of God in who I live and move and have my Being. Being deeply loved, I love deeply.

As Father Thomas Keating put it so succinctly in our retreat day in Bar Harbor last summer--”just sit down and shut up”--and be transformed by God’s love.

A centering prayer group meets at Holy Family on the first and third Thursdays in the Public Chapel at 7:00 p.m. Contact Joann Norr for more information at: norr31@comcast.net

For resources on Centering Prayer visit the Contemplative Outreach website at http://www.centeringprayer.com

Sue Morse